Powered medical handpieces in the past have been provided with chucks for oscillating driving of the blades, such as saw blades suitable for cast cutting, bone sawing or the like. One example is that shown in Treace expired U.S. Pat. No. 2,557,364, and which has been in production by the assignee of the present invention for several decades. The present invention results from a continuing effort to improve on such prior art devices.
Thus, the objects of this invention include the provision of chuck and blade apparatus of simple and inexpensive structure, in which the chuck and blade can be partly covered by a shroud-like cap on the handpiece to facilitate suction chip collection during cutting, in which the apparatus is capable of easy chucking and un-chucking of a blade, and wherein the chucked blade is positively entrapped by the chuck even with the clamping, or holddown, part of the chuck inadvertently left not fully tightened.